On the board in Oxfordshire

By Ben McCay,  Team-Up Board member and member of My Life My Choice, Oxfordshire

My Life My Choice asked me if I wanted to visit a co-production board meeting in Oxfordshire, which was on the 3rd April 2018 and I said I would like to attend.

At the meeting it was explained to me by the board members that they wanted people with experience of using services within Oxfordshire to come and visit to see if they would like to become a permanent member of the co-production board.  Danie who is the co-production lead at Oxfordshire County Council explained to me and the other people visiting about the co-production aims and plans. I was thanked for visiting.

My Life My Choice asked me if I would like to become a permanent member of the co-production board and explained if I did Danie and some of the other board members would interview me about why I wanted to become a board member and what my motivation for joining was and what did I think I could contribute to the table. 

I thought I could use my experiences of using services to help lead the way in designing good quality co-produced services. I had an interview.

I then attended my second meeting as a full board member. At the meeting we had to review the Oxfordshire co-production champions training. The board did one day of the training and were asked to give our feedback.

I gave positive and constructive criticism to help shape the training for the champions. I really enjoyed working in small groups at the training discussing how to put literature into plain English. We then wrote down our plain English and fed back to the other groups.

After the training I felt I had a better understanding of what co-production is.

I attended the co-production festival in Camden which is part of co-production week and enjoyed being part of group discussions and feeding my ideas back to the other people. I learnt more about SCIE and enjoyed the music and seeing The Lost Voice Guy perform.

I am looking forward to being on the co-production interview panel to help employ a new member of the co-production team. 

I am very pleased to be part of the work the co-production board are doing in working towards promoting co-production and shaping services to improve them in the future.